Fifty years ago, at Biaozi Ridge in Changsha, four local men were squatting on a mound of earth, all silent, staring intently at a Luoyang shovel lying on the ground. The shovel was still covered in the old dirt it had just been dug from, and strangely, this bad soil was seeping bright red liquid, as if it had just been dipped in blood.

“This is a big trouble now,” said the old smoker, tapping his hand-rolled cigarette on the ground. “Below is a blood corpse; if we’re not careful, we might end up leaving our lives down there.”

“Should we go down or not? Just say it plainly, no beating around the bush!” the one-eyed young man said. “You say you, an old man, have trouble with your legs, so don’t go down. My brother and I will go down; whatever it is, we’ll just give it a burst.”

The old smoker laughed instead of getting angry and said to the bearded man beside him, “Your second son is always stirring up trouble; who knows when he’ll get himself into a fix. You need to educate him more; our business isn’t just about having a box cannon, you know.”

The bearded man shot a glare at the young man. “You brat, how can you talk to the old man like that? When the old man was digging dirt, you were still in your mother’s womb, eating shit!”

“What can I say… I misspoke. The ancestors didn’t say anything wrong; that blood corpse is a good thing. There must be plenty of treasures down there. If we don’t go down, we’ll just be left with a pot of soup.”

“Are you still daring to talk back?” The bearded man raised his hand to hit him, but the old smoker blocked it with his smoking pipe.

“Don’t hit him; you were the same when you were young. This is what they call ‘an unsteady beam leads to a crooked roof’!”

Seeing his father being scolded, the one-eyed young man lowered his head and chuckled. The old smoker coughed and then gave the one-eyed boy a light knock on the head. “What are you laughing at? Encountering a blood corpse can be serious or trivial; last time your second uncle dug one up in Luoyang, and now he’s still raving mad, not knowing what’s hit him. Wait a moment; I’ll go down first, you follow behind me. Second son, you bring a dirt rat to guard the back. Third son, you don’t need to go down; if all four of us go down, there won’t be time to retreat. Just hold onto the dirt rat’s tail, and when we shout inside, you pull the stuff out.”

The youngest boy was dissatisfied. “I don’t agree; you’re biased! I’ll tell my mom!”

The old smoker laughed heartily. “Look at that, the third son is still scared! Don’t make a fuss, and I’ll let you touch a golden knife.”

“I don’t want you to touch it; I can touch it myself.”

The one-eyed second brother got angry and grabbed the youngest brother’s ear. “What are you trying to do, causing trouble for me? Are you trying to provoke me?!”

The youngest boy, who seemed to have taken quite a beating in the past, was frightened into silence when he saw his second brother really angry. He looked at his father for help, but to his surprise, his father had already gone to gather the tools. The second brother was now smug. “Why are you so helpless? This time, the old man won’t help you. If you shout again, I’ll twist your ear into a flower chicken!”

The old smoker patted the second brother on the shoulder and shouted, “Boys, grab your tools!” With that, he swung the shovel, and it began to whirl.

Half an hour later, the tunnel had been dug deep enough that you couldn’t see the bottom. Except for the second brother coming up occasionally for air, the sounds from inside were barely audible. The third brother grew impatient and shouted into the hole, “Great-grandfather, have you dug through yet?”

After several seconds, a vague voice came from inside: “I… don’t know, you… stay up there, hold the… rope tight!” It was his second brother’s voice, followed by a cough from his old cigarette butt: “Keep it down… Listen! There’s movement!”

Then there was a deathly silence.

The third brother knew something must have gone wrong below, and he was too scared to speak. Suddenly, he heard a chilling croaking sound, like a frog, coming from the hole.

Then his second brother shouted from below: “Third kid, pull!”

He didn’t dare hesitate. He pushed off the ground and yanked the tail of the earth rat, pulling it out. Just after a few pulls, it felt like something below had bitten down, and a force began to pull the rope back into the hole. The third brother had never expected this situation; he almost got pulled into the hole. In a moment of desperation, he quickly tied the tail around his waist and leaned back, almost forming a 30-degree angle with the ground. This was a trick he had learned during tug-of-war games with other boys in the village. This way, all his weight would press against the rope, and even if it were a mule, he could hold his ground.

Sure enough, this tactic allowed him to face off against whatever was in the hole. Both sides struggled, but neither could budge an inch. After a tense standoff of several seconds, he heard a loud bang from inside the hole, followed by his father shouting, “Third kid, run!!!!!!” Suddenly, he felt the rope slacken, and the earth rat shot out of the hole, as if something was still hanging onto it! At that moment, the third brother didn’t have time to think; he knew something had gone wrong below. He caught the earth rat and turned to run!

He ran for more than two li before daring to stop. He pulled the earth rat from his arms and screamed in horror: there was a bloody severed hand hooked onto the rat! He recognized that hand and couldn’t help but cry; it was unmistakably his second brother’s. It seemed his second brother was either dead or severely injured. With this thought, he gritted his teeth, wanting to go back and save his brother and father. Just as he turned around, he saw a blood-red figure crouching behind him, staring straight at him.

The third brother was no fool; he had followed his father through many dangers and had witnessed plenty of bizarre things. He knew anything could happen underground, and it was crucial not to panic but to adapt to the situation. After all, no ghost could match a living person. Whatever it was, it had to obey the laws of physics. If he shot it with a gun, it would be nothing to fear.

With this in mind, he steeled himself. As he stepped back, he pulled a box cannon from his waist and got ready to fire. If that blood-red figure made any move, he would unleash a storm of bullets. To his surprise, the blood-red figure stood up. The third brother looked closely and felt his scalp tingle and his stomach churn; it was clearly a person who had been skinned! Covered in blood, it looked as if it had just squeezed itself out of a human skin. Yet, this kind of person could still move; it was truly a miracle. Could this be the true form of a blood corpse?

Thinking about it, that bloody corpse suddenly lunged forward, and in an instant, the third brother locked eyes with it. The blood-soaked face came right up to his nose, and a wave of nausea hit him. The third brother instinctively fell backward, while the box cannon fired a full load of bullets at close range into the creature’s chest. The distance was too short, and the bullets all penetrated, causing blood to splatter everywhere as the creature staggered back several steps. The third brother felt a surge of joy in his heart, and as he turned to aim at the creature’s head, he pulled the trigger, only to hear a click—the gun had jammed!

This old box cannon was dug up by his great-grandfather from a warlord’s grave many years ago; it hadn’t been used much since. Unfortunately, in recent years, he had been running around with his father and had no time for maintenance. There had been so few opportunities to fire the gun that he never expected it would jam at such a critical moment. The third brother was no simpleton; upon realizing the gun was unusable, he swung his arm with all his might and smashed the gun forward, not caring whether he hit anything, and turned to run. This time, he didn’t dare look back. He aimed for a big tree ahead, thinking that surely it couldn’t climb a tree. Suddenly, he tripped and fell flat on his face, smashing his nose against a tree stump, instantly filling his mouth and nose with blood.

The third brother slammed his palm on the ground in frustration, feeling incredibly unlucky. Just then, he heard a rustling sound behind him, realizing that the Grim Reaper was calling for him. He steeled himself, thinking, “If I’m going to die, then so be it,” and simply lay on the ground without getting up. To his surprise, the bloody corpse seemed not to see him at all and stepped right over him, leaving a bloody imprint on his back. The corpse was surprisingly heavy; when it stepped down, the third brother felt a sweetness in his throat, as if his bile had been stomped out. The spot on his back that had been stepped on immediately began to itch intensely, and his vision blurred. He soon realized he might have been poisoned, and the toxin was extremely potent. In a daze, he caught a glimpse of something in his second brother’s hand not far away.

He blinked hard and focused; it turned out to be a piece of ancient silk. He thought to himself, “This is something my second brother risked his life to bring out. It must be something extraordinary. Now I have no idea what has happened to them. I have to secure this item; if I really do die, they can find it on my body. At least my second brother’s sacrifice won’t be in vain, and I won’t die for nothing.” As he pondered this, he painfully crawled over, pried open his second brother’s tightly clenched hand, took the silk from his palm, and stuffed it into his sleeve.

At that moment, he felt a buzzing in his ears, his vision clouded like a layer of gauze had been placed over it, and his hands and feet began to grow cold. Based on his past experiences, he knew he had likely soiled himself; those poisoned by the corpse toxin often died in horrible ways. Right now, he desperately hoped that the girl from the neighboring village wouldn’t see him like this.

As he drifted in and out of consciousness, his mind was no longer responding to his commands, and he began to faintly hear that strange clucking sound he had heard at the entrance of the tunnel.

Lao San vaguely sensed that something was off. He had been fighting the blood corpse for quite some time and hadn’t heard it make a sound, so why was it suddenly calling out now? Could it be that the one he fought earlier wasn’t the blood corpse at all? What, then, was that thing he had seen? Unfortunately, at this moment, he was almost incapable of thinking. Instinctively, he raised his head and glanced up, only to see a gigantic, monstrous face leaning down to look at him, its two pupil-less eyes empty and devoid of life.